Monday, May 20, 2013

This one word is so
important in running a corporation in Eve. It is the act of determining what is
going on by watching and making a judgment on what you are seeing or hearing.
This does not mean that you are right, and in some cases you will be dead wrong
in what you have decided is happening. Depending on the situation, and the
importance of the act you have observed, this could be detrimental to you, and
your corporation.

What do I mean by
this? Everything boils down to how we as humans perceive our surroundings, and
what could be dangerous to us, and our way of life. We all have a lack of trust
that is there to protect us, and in Eve it is heightened due to what we have
witnessed, and read about. What we do is always seen by others, maybe in the
right light, but where there could be cause for alarm we will err on the side
of caution, and hushed whispers that something is up, and needs to be watched
carefully. These emotions are heightened when seen through the eyes of higher
ranked people within your corporation, since they have more to lose, and a greater
sense of responsibility to protect the Corporation and its members from harm.

An example would be
someone pushing for more roles within the corporation, they may just want to be
a bigger part of what’s happening, but they could also want those roles to
sabotage your corporation and steal its assets. It all comes down to the
perception of the command structure of the corporation, and what they deem as
suspicious behavior. The person wanting more roles could be innocent of any
wrong thinking, or malicious plans, but in a game like Eve it doesn’t matter.
Trust is earned slowly in most corporations, one’s that have been burned before
and one’s that have seen or heard it happen to others.

A good rule of thumb
is to be up front with the members of your corporation, or your corporation CEO’s
if you’re a leader of an alliance. If people know the intentions, and the base
perceptions for common actions within your leadership, they are more apt to
understand how things work in your command and what is considered poor form, or
inappropriate actions that will cause undue scrutiny upon you or your
corporation.

As always a certain
amount of transparency goes along way to helping new people to your
corporation, or new corporations to your alliance adjust and understand the
reasons behind your command style. Eve is a game of distrust, but in the end
when that trust is earned and appreciated it becomes the kind of trust that
will last. Most spies will try to gain your trust quickly, after all time is
money, and they want your money and don’t want to spend years doing it. Be
advised though, there are people out there that play that game, they will spend
all the time in the world to get you to make them a director, you will think he’s
your best friend, he has your back, and would never do anything to harm you or
the corporation he so lovingly pledges himself to, so be careful, be vigilant,
but above all else be aware that the more you play this game, the easier it
will become to perceive when something is not quite right.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

I was thinking of what I would like to see in the coming expansions for EvE Online. This is just my wishlist and opinion on what that might look like.

Ruin – Summer Expansion 2014

System shake up / all three sectors

The creation of
several Solar / and nebula events that will persist in the game universe. Space
is not meant to be static, and there should be areas of space that are harsher,
or change up the effects that occur in them. You do this to some extent in WH
space with the suns granting buffs or debuffs to your ships. Just as everyday
life on earth, the sun does not shine everyday, we have different weather
effects that can cause us to change our plans, and in some cases, make us run
for cover. Every system should not be the same all the time. Expanding on the
exploration aspect some of these events or occurrences should have to be
scanned down, and then exploited or marked as dangerous areas. The possibility
of starting out with a system or two in all four races areas, low, and 0.0
space could see changes occurring to space in 12 to 20 systems to begin with
and expanding out from there to create swaths of systems that create a natural
block that will alter how we play the game to adjust to these phenomena. For lack
of a better name, there could be the use of the terms Badlands (no shields
worked, even on POS’s), Briar Patch (loss of all communications, or cloaking
ability), ship altering nebula (unable to target, loss of shields, inability to
warp or use micro warp drives), photon, plasma or ion storms (storms that would
last a finite time in a system that would disrupt any number of things), comets
(visual), black holes ( being in proximity to one of these would crush your
structure), meteor showers (visual), the list goes on.

New NPC Pirate faction

A new Faction, not necessarily
pirates, but a group of capsuleers that have broken off from the main stream. Calling
themselves the Jovian Guard, they have set up shop in a 0.0 system close to low
sec. This new faction wants to be left alone and to their own devises. Claiming
a system as their own and fighting fiercely over it, defending it against
anyone that enters it. The AI would be more advanced with this faction and they
would set up gate camps, and you would also find they have mining barges in the
belts that when attacked would call for help and have other ships arrive to
fight off the attackers.

This new faction
would have claimed this system and have a TCU set up and defended. If left
alone and free to do what they want, they will eventually expand to a random
neighboring system and begin attacks against the inhabitants of the new system.
This faction would be an expansion on the current ratting as you would need
small fleets of ships to take them on.

Expansion on exploration

To expand further on
the exploration theme added anomalies would be added that could aid or be
potentially damaging upon being found. These new anomalies would have to be
scanned down, and then once pin pointed the capsuleer would have to figure out
what these new sites did, and how they could either benefit themselves or
others. The ability to sell this information is an option as it would take a
very good scanner to find these different and amazing sites.

Some ideas would be
a pocket of null space that once you warped to it you found yourself in a
section of space that had no stars and was completely black. You would have to
work out that this section of space removed you from local, and any type of
scan. This could also be compounded by trying to figure out its size, and not
knowing how long this anomaly will last.

You could also find
a section of space that once you warped to it after scanning started to eat
away at your shields, armor, or structure. This could be potentially dangerous
to anyone who entered it.

More dust integration / new ships

Add two new ships to
Eve that would work with dust game play. I am not sure if this could be done,
but it is an interesting idea. Based off the shuttle design of the four races
we could develop new fighters that would not be warp capable but would be able
to have atmospheric flight. These new fighters would be transported in a
smaller carrier the size would be somewhere between a Battleship, and a carrier,
and be capable of carrying up to 5 fighters into a district for air support
from eve players into dust.

A more robust contract system /
diplomacy

Add new contracts to
the contract system to allow for diplomatic contracts that would span 1, 3, and
6 month periods. This new contracts could be used for renting, non aggression
pacts, and Alliance/
Coalition dues. This could be expanded further as the need arises.

Fleet command revamp

The Fleet command system would be limited to
50 ships per fleet, and the fleet commander could set a certain number of specific
ships that would be allowed to join it. For example a certain number of
logistic ships / bombers, etc. limiting the fleet size would make it more
interesting as you would need more fleet commanders, and more coordination between
fleets to accomplish your goals, instead of blobbing.

The other idea was
to set a mass limit on cyno’s, there is a mass limit to entering wormhole space,
why not how many ships you can jump in on one cyno? This change would require
that a new section on the fleet tab would have to be made showing the current
mass of a fleet. The possibility is also there to add a new capital cyno as
well that had a larger mass, but could only jump capital ships in.

We could also add a
new ship here, called a bridging ship. It would be designed as a fleet command
ship that would allow a link to the cyno and jump the fleet.

Risk / reward build

With the new system
effects, and adding harshness to some sectors of space should also bring a
better risk / reward design to those areas. If you wanted to brave the new
effects and set up in those areas, the reward should be equal to its dangers.
Adding these elements would also change how we would fight within these
sectors, if we would fight, and where we would make a stand. The potential to
use these new effects to our advantage, or against our enemy would be
different.

Unknown elements that must be
figured out

Exploration should
be just that, and some of the things that are found, or new effects with in the
systems should have to be figured out, and not hand feed to us. The idea of
finding strange new sections of space, and then having to figure out just what
they do would add a interesting and fun element to the game.

Corporation revamp / recruitment /
no more 3 man corps

The Ability to
recruit has always been tough, unless you’re a huge coalition or alliance. This
causes the game to stagnate as there should always be newer alliances, and
corporations that are on the rise, and pushing for their own piece of space. I
am not asking for a free pass, or a way to stop them from recruiting. There
needs to be a way to limit the small to non existent 1-5 man Corporations that
are so abundant in the game. I understand that Eve is a sandbox, and you should
play however you want to play. I am just stating it’s very hard right now to
find a way to recruiting players.

New exploration skills / navigation
skills

The Idea that we could add new skills that would
help with what we find out in these new areas would have to be handled in a
different way. I can’t see these skills just going up on the market as soon as
the expansion hits, as that would defeat the idea of going out there and
finding out what’s there, and how it affects us.

There are two ideas
I have that would maybe work better, or at least until the winter expansion
came out. The first is to seed certain ships found in these new areas with the
skill books that would lead to the new skills. They could be rare drops with
not more than a dozen or two (combined) dropping in the first month. These new
skills would allow for better navigation, scanning, or engineering to alleviate
some of the effects found in the new
systems. It would be interesting if there was a way to copy these skill books
for resale as well, but it would have to take a decent amount of time to copy
them.

New exploration modules

New modules could
also be introduced in the same way as above. I have also thought it would be
interesting if you could have systems that required two modules to be fitted to
work, it would make for some interesting fits.

Industry as a major advantage to
PvP alliances

I have always found that not all Alliances,
but some always neglect the industry side of things. The quote “PvP makes you
deadly, but Industry keeps you that way” has always stuck in my head. I am not
sure if it could be expanded on, but I know that CCP is trying to do this now,
so it’s possible that this will be the case in the near future.

Frontiers – Winter Expansion 2014

Frontiers will
expand on the Summer Expansion, with the addition of more systems having
effects that change the way we play the game. I look forward to what CCP is
doing, and by all means am not knocking the direction it is headed. I would
just like to see some more interactive space in the future.